WORLD SOCIAL FORUM: India, not Brazil, to Host Next Year's Meet

Mario Osava

The international board of the World Social Forum (WSF) decided Wednesday that the giant annual meeting of social activists and left-leaning political leaders and academics will be held in India in 2004, before returning to Brazil the following year.

PORTO ALEGRE, Brazil, Jan 22 (IPS) - The international board of the World Social Forum (WSF) decided Wednesday that the giant annual meeting of social activists and left-leaning political leaders and academics will be held in India in 2004, before returning to Brazil the following year.

The process of selecting the southern Indian city of Hyderabad, which hosted the regional Asian Social Forum Jan 2-7, as the site of the fourth WSF involved lengthy discussions because the organisers in India had asked for one month to assess whether they were in a position to take on the enormous responsibility.

But in the end, the aim of ''internationalising'' the forum by holding some of the meetings in other regions won out. Porto Alegre, where the first two meetings were held, will continue to be the host every other year.

The third WSF opens Thursday with an inaugural ceremony and a massive march through the streets of Porto Alegre, the capital of the southern Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul, which will kick off five days of panels and workshops on the pressing problems facing today's world and on how to build a better future for humanity.

One novel aspect will be the presence of Brazil's new President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, a former steelworker, on Friday. This will be the first time that a head of government or state addresses the gathering of social movements, non-governmental organisations, and leftist political parties and academics.

Lula took part in and spoke at the first two meetings in Porto Alegre, but he did so as the head of the leftist Workers' Party (PT) and possible presidential candidate for the October 2002 elections that he ended up winning in a landslide victory.

This time around he will be speaking as president of this South American country of 170 million, in the midst of a controversy over his decision to also attend the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland.

His plans to participate in the WEF on Saturday and Sunday drew fire from many people taking part in the WSF, which emerged precisely as a sort of counterpoint to the annual meeting of the world's most powerful business and political leaders in Switzerland.

Unlike the first two editions, the WSF was preceded this year by a series of preparatory gatherings, held in the past five months.

For instance, Argentina held a Thematic Social Forum in August, the European Social Forum took place in Florence, Italy in November, the Asian Social Forum was held in early January, and the Pan-Amazon Social Forum took place in Belém, in northern Brazil, on Jan 16-19.

In addition, three events held in the run-up to the WSF ended Wednesday in Porto Alegre.

One of them was the World Economic Forum, which drew 20,000 educators and experts from around the globe Sunday through Wednesday, who took part in 60 panels, seminars and debates that discussed 785 papers on experiences and innovations in education and heard more than 200 speakers.

The ''decolonisation'' of education, popular education, democratic participation, and the effects of armed conflicts on schools in Angola, southern Mexico and Colombia were several of the subjects discussed at the gathering, which was held for the second year in a row as part of the WSF.

The third Forum of Local Authorities for Social Inclusion, which brought together around 1,000 mayors and other participants from 26 countries on Tuesday and Wednesday, called for ''contracts'' between governments and civil society to tackle serious problems like lack of access to health care and education.

Among the proposals set forth by the meeting was the drawing up of an ''Agenda 21'' for cities, in favour of the development of culture and the creation of an international network that would link all mayors' associations in a single global movement.

Culture should be viewed as ''a basic social necessity'' based on the recognition of diversity, the right to identity by all ethnic and social groups, and the right to recreation, education and the use of public spaces, said Margarete Moraes, culture secretary of the city of Porto Alegre.

The deepening of participative democracy in municipal governments was advocated by Portuguese sociologist Boaventua de Sousa Santos and mayors like Bernard Birsinger of Bobigny, France, and Edmilson Rodrigues of the northern Brazilian city of Belém.

Judges also held their second global forum Monday through Wednesday, with the presence of 510 members of the judiciaries of countries in the Americas and Europe.

The speakers underscored the need for regional and international courts, due to the frequent clash between the interests of transnational corporations (TNCs) and human rights.

The judges pointed, for example, to the frequent disregard of the environment by TNCs when conservation efforts cut into their profit margins. In addition, they said that respect for citizen rights required the real possibility of taking TNCs to court.

Only truly independent judges aware of their role in society can exercise the law in such a way as to check the advance of the political and economic powers, the magistrates said in their final declaration, which called a new meeting in Brazil next year.

Two other global gatherings, of trade unionists and parliamentarians, began Wednesday.

Around 600 labour activists are discussing the challenges of globalisation in their first two-day meeting organised in Porto Alegre by the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, the World Confederation of Labour, and the European Trade Union Confederation.

Meanwhile, legislators from around the world are holding their third meeting parallel to the WSF, which will run through Friday, and the World Farmworkers Assembly is taking place Tuesday through Thursday.

Finally, the Intercontinental Youth Camp and the World Junior Forum have drawn youngsters from all over the world.

Organising the WSF and the parallel and national or regional gatherings is a gargantuan task involving fund-raising efforts by many organisations around the world that have scarce finances, especially since the number of participants in the WSF has basically doubled each year.

This year more than 100,000 people are expected, since 30,000 delegates and 70,000 participants have signed up. The organising costs will run to nearly 3.5 million dollars, said Candido Grzybowski, one of the members of the Brazilian organising committee. Only 800,000 dollars are coming from the registration fees paid by participants, he added.

The governments of the state of Rio Grande do Sul and Porto Alegre are donating a total of 600,000 dollars, the Ford Foundation has provided 500,000 dollars, and the state-owned Bank of Brazil and Petrobras oil company are donating 400,000 dollars. (END)